10 Things That Slow Your Metabolism

Stop these habits now to boost your calorie-burning potential

Need another reason to love your body? It burns calories all by itself—as long as you don't get in the way. See, every cell in your body plays a role in energy metabolism—the process of turning the food you eat into energy that keeps your heart beating, lungs pumping, and muscles moving. The faster your metabolism, the more calories you burn. And just like there are ways to speed it up—by working out, for instance—certain habits can hit the brakes on your natural calorie-churning engine.

In a 2012 Hebrew University study, mice fed high fat foods sporadically gained more weight than mice that ate a similar diet on a regular schedule. Researchers suspect that eating at the same times every day trains the body to burn more calories between meals.

Organochlorines (chemicals in pesticides) can interfere with your body's energy-burning process and make it harder to lose weight, according to a Canadian study. Researchers found that dieters who ate the most toxins experienced a greater-than-normal dip in metabolism and had a harder time losing weight.

A 2012 study found that people who sleep less move less the next day, which means they burn fewer calories. But it gets worse: Sleep deprivation actually reduces the amount of energy your body uses at rest, according to the German and Swedish researchers.

Your internal clock directly controls the part of your cells that keeps your metabolism chugging along. But when you disrupt your so-called circadian rhythm—by crossing time zones, for instance—your cells don't function the way they should and your metabolism suffers, according to researchers at the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at University of California - Irvine.

Another reason to drink your milk: Calcium plays a key role in regulating your fat metabolism, which determines whether you burn calories or store them as fat. A diet that's high in calcium could help you burn more fat, according to research conducted at the Nutrition Institute at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

When you miss breakfast, you don't just set yourself up to overeat at lunch. You actually tell your body to conserve energy—which means it burns calories more slowly. That's one reason a study from the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who skip a morning meal were 4.5 times more likely to be obese.

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